Mother Nature Wrecks Havoc on Air Conditioning Systems in Many Ways!

Forget the anticipated 100 + Degree Days Coming, forget the kid’s running back and forth leaving the doors wide open and the AC System running constantly.

These can kill the system too, but look out for the little buggers that bite!

This video is from a house that had no cooling with house temperatures upstairs reaching over 85 degrees in a matter of hours - and we weren't even in the heat of summer.

Upon inspection of the air handler, I found ants crawling in and around the coil. Upon further investigation, I found the ants were traveling up the thermostat wire into the air handler from the condenser unit.

The contactor in the condenser would not close due to literally hundreds of ants balled up dead underneath the contactor points. Many more ants were alive and well trying to do more damage!

If your air conditioning system is not operating correctly, have Clear Springs Air Conditioning & Electric out to diagnose and repair your situation so you can keep your home nice and cool through this spring and summer!

When your Air Conditioning Company does your spring tuneup or inspection, do they pull your blower assembly out from your furnace, separate the motor from the blower wheel, and clean the wheel, the motor, and the housing?

If not, they are very possibly leaving the motor full of dirt and dust that will make the motor run hot, often leading to an early failure of your fan motor.

When Clear Springs Air Conditioning and Electric does a Spring Tuneup we pull the blower assembly and tear it down for cleaning.

This gives us the opportunity to clean the motor and oil it if it has oil ports. We also electrically check the motor and the run capacitor if it has one. The capacitor has to be within 6% of its manufacturers ratings or it can damage the motor winding's and cause the motor ultimately to fail to start. While we have the blower assembly apart, we clean the blower housing and wheel, thus ensuring the full air flow required for proper air conditioning.

Clear Springs Air Conditioning and Electric will do a complete checkup on your AC System. We believe it should take a couple of hours or ore to complete a thorough air conditioning tune up. We do not charge more to be thorough, we believe this is the correct way to do an Air Conditioning Tuneup. We do everything we can to leave your system in great shape to deliver clean, comfortable, and safe air to you.

This is why our complete Spring Air Conditioning Tuneup is not priced as a $25.00, $30.00, $45.00, or even a $60.00 so called tuneup or inspection. No company can afford do this high quality work for those prices.

You know the old adage...if it sounds to good to be true, it must not be true.

Call Clear Springs Air Conditioning for a real bargain in a spring Air Conditioning tuneup; a complete thorough tuneup, where everything is checked and you end up with a well functioning system - instead of you paying another company just to get into your home so they have the chance to constantly pitch you a new system or try to sell you expensive add on's every time they come to do work, which is the only reason they offer these very low, unrealistic prices.
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Remember, if you live in New Braunfels, and use NBU as your energy provider; New Braunfels Utilities offers a $40.00 energy rebate for a complete and properly documented Air Conditioning Tuneup.

​Evaporator Coil Failures and Refrigerant (Freon) Leaks

The common problem of refrigerant leaks often stems from the evaporator coil section of the home air conditioning system.

Historically, most evaporator coils were made of copper tubes inside of aluminum fins that were sandwiched between galvanized steel tube sheets. These surfaces stay wet when functioning correctly during the cooling cycle.

Formicary Corrosion, caused by the Volatile Organic Compounds or VOC’s often found in today’s home environment (often from the building materials of the home, furniture, carpet, hair sprays, etc.), cause the copper and steel to corrode creating many small leaks (this is sometimes called Ant Nest Corrosion) in the refrigerant system.

Galvanic Action, the corrosion of 2 dissimilar metals touching can also play a significant factor in coil failures.

Today, to help prevent these failures, many coils are made with aluminum tubes and tube sheets instead of copper and galvanized steel. Aluminum Coils are much less susceptible to Formicary Corrosion than Copper Coils are.

Clear Springs can help you with these and other problems you face from your Home Air Conditioning System and Electrical Systems. Call us!

When you notice water around your condenser unit (outside unit) during the winter, it is normal. The outdoor unit operates as the evaporator coil in the heating mode. As such it removes water from the surrounding air as the air temperature drops. Occasionally the unit will go into defrost to thaw out this water that has frozen on the coils. That is where the water comes from.

Another common heat pump question: What is the sudden air noise, like a busted tire, that occurs at the outdoor unit? The heat pump has a valve in it that switches the flow of refrigerant between the indoor coil and the outdoor coil. This valve is operated by electricity as well as the pressure differential between the high pressure and low pressure sides of the unit. When the valve is energized, it will shift the pilot-piston and the pressures push the main piston/valve and the pressures equalize briefly. When the valve is de-energized it shifts back, making the noise again. Most manufactures have the valve energized in cooling mode; Rheem/Ruud energizes their reversing valves in heating mode.

In years past, we've gotten multiple calls from customers telling us their Heat Pump Condensing units were on fire. When the heat pump goes into defrost mode, it will often make vapor of the water accumulated on the coil. It may look like smoke, it is not. When it is in defrost, the outdoor fan does not run. This is to make the defrost cycle as short as possible. When it goes out of the defrost cycle, the fan will come back on. By the way, when it goes into and out of the defrost cycles, the reversing valve will operate, making the air whooshing noise we spoke about above.

When we have freezing rain ice will form on your heat pump. This is normal and the defrost should take care of it unless we get lots of precipitation...The big concern is if enough ice forms so the fan blade hits it as it runs. If this happens, turn off the breaker to your Heat pump and leave your Air Handler on. Put your system to "Emergency Heat Mode" and you should be comfortable. If you leave the thermostat in heat pump mode instead of emergency heat mode, the heat strips will still come on just 3 degrees lower than you want the heat setting on for.